Saturday, August 27, 2011

Before Vonta Leach signed with the Baltimore Ravens, I heard many fans argue that Houston Texans GM Rick Smith was being cheap and would regret not giving in to Vonta's request to become the highest paid fullback in the league. In essence, they argued the Texans should keep Leach at all costs. I loved watching Vonta block last year, and was sorry to see him go; Leach may very well be the best blocking fullback in the league. Even so, I think the Texans made the right decision. Here are three reasons why:

Leach's Impact Not as Great as Fans Think

Some fans argued that the Texans' running game will be much less effective without Leach. I don't doubt that there will be at least one occasion this year when

Saturday, August 20, 2011

How Much Would $1 Invested in the Dow Index in 19xx be Worth Now? This post addresses that question for "any" start-year -- and any end-year (not just "now"). The calculator works whether your initial investment was $1, $100, $10,000, or any other amount.

In addition, the spreadsheet calculates the average yearly return (compound yearly growth rate) between the two years you input, and breaks out the return attributable to dividends from the return resulting from price appreciation.

Note: Click on the screenshot below to expand it. The link to download the spreadsheet is at the end of the post. If you do not have spreadsheet software, see "Related Posts" below.

Following is a sample of questions this spreadsheet can answer.

$1 Invested in the Stock Market (Dow) in 1929 is Worth How Much Today?

The graphic above shows the results of a hypothetical investment in the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average Index) at year-end 1929. The assumption is that the investment was sold at year-end 2010, with

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Note: The purpose of this post is just to archive the original (2010) projection for posterity. For the most recent projection, see The 10-Year Stock Market Projection. The original post follows....

Expected Return for the Next 10 Years

Previous posts have shown the results of backtesting the initial version of my market projection model. In this post, we'll develop projections of 10-year stock market returns that extend into the future where we no longer have the luxury of knowing the actual results.

Projected 10-Year Stock Market Returns

Projected Dow 10-Year Returns

The above graph (click to expand) shows the projected 10-year annualized returns of

Saturday, August 6, 2011

I have previously posted the best and worst stock market returns for periods from one to one hundred years -- usually as "rolling returns." In this post, we'll rank order the yearly returns from 1900 through 2012.

The Best Dow Yearly Returns since 1900

The above table (click to expand) shows the best yearly performances of the DJIA (Dow Jones Industrial Average) index since 1900. I was originally going to show the top 25% (75th percentile and above), but expanded the range slightly to include 2009, a recent year of special interest. Note that the returns listed represent